New business books

Get some tips for starting a modern business and becoming a market leader from these two new books available from the new book display shelf on the ground floor of the library.

The lean startup : how constant innovation creates radically successful businesses / Eric Ries.

Most startups are built to fail. But those failures, according to entrepreneur Eric Ries, are preventable. Startups don't fail because of bad execution, or missed deadlines, or blown budgets. They fail because they are building something nobody wants. Whether they arise from someone's garage or are created within a mature Fortune 500 organization, new ventures, by definition, are designed to create new products or services under conditions of extreme uncertainly. Their primary mission is to find out what customers ultimately will buy. One of the central premises of The Lean Startup movement is what Ries calls "validated learning" about the customer. It is a way of getting continuous feedback from customers so that the company can shift directions or alter its plans inch by inch, minute by minute. Rather than creating an elaborate business plan and a product-centric approach, Lean Startup prizes testing your vision continuously with your customers and making constant adjustments.



Digital disciplines : attaining market leadership via the cloud, big data, social, mobile, and the internet of things / Joe Weinman.

Leverage digital technologies to achieve competitive advantage through better processes, products, customer relationships and innovation. How does Information Technology enable competitive advantage? Digital Disciplines details four strategies that exploit today's digital technologies to create unparalleled customer value. Using non-technical language, this book describes the blueprints that any company, large or small, can use to gain or retain market leadership, based on insights derived from examining modern digital giants such as Amazon and Netflix as well as established firms such as GE, Nike, and UPS. Companies can develop a competitive edge through four digital disciplines--information excellence, solution leadership, collective intimacy, and accelerated innovation--that exploit cloud computing, big data and analytics, mobile and wireline networks, social media, and the Internet of Things.